


Learning to Compromise

by Erry



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Bad Sex, Badass Rhys, Hallucinations, Hurt Jack, Hurt!Jack, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, Jack Feels, Jack survives BL2, Kidnapping, M/M, Manipulation, Moving In Together, Rescue Fic, Rhys is Handsome Jack's Personal Assistant, Rhys to the rescue, VP!Blake, both of them are assholes, emotionally constipated assholes in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-07 07:09:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21454048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erry/pseuds/Erry
Summary: Rhys has cold feet about moving in with Jack.Luckily, Jack is a bit too busy being kidnapped to worry about that. But he can look after himself. Right?
Relationships: Handsome Jack/Rhys (Borderlands)
Comments: 41
Kudos: 160





	1. Chapter One

SOMEWHERE ON PANDORA

Y’know, in the stories on the ECHOnet that all the horny kids are writing, it's Jack’s hot-but-helpless PA that gets kidnapped and roughed up and ultimately saved by Jack himself, The Hero, yada yada, blah blah blah, rescue sex, the end. But that's just how it is in the fun, erotic shit, right? Jack is all for it, of course — who doesn’t like reading porn about themselves? — but when it comes down to it…

No. The one the bad guys are gonna come after is be the Big Man himself, duh. They aren’t going to worry about some spindly-ass kid, no matter how hot he is. Nope, Jack tells himself as he watches the ceiling go past above him. You’re the prize, Jack. It’s all about you. These bandits hit the Jackpot. 

Heh, Jackpot.

‘You’re delirious,’ says Rhys, only he doesn’t really say it because he's not really there. Jack gives him a wide, bloody smile as the bandit continues to drag him through the abandoned facility.

‘Sh’up, cupcake,’ Jack says, his mouth tasting coppery, lip stinging where the butt of the bandit’s gun had split it against Jack’s teeth. ‘You’re not real. Or maybe you’re the delirious one, huh?’ 

Rhys rolls his eyes. His skagskin boots make no sound on the concrete floor as he follows the bandit, who drags Jack around a corner and into a side room, where he drops him unceremoniously on the concrete.

_I should try and get up,_ Jack thinks, but his body seems to be having trouble responding to orders right now. The rope once tight around his wrists has loosened enough to slip it it, but… nah, he’ll just stay here in the dust for another minute. Let the bandit think he’s won for a little longer, before Jack shows him — no, _ them _. There’s another stinking lowlife leaning over him now.

‘Holy shit,’ the bandit says, and wow, his breath is _ bad _. He’s got, like, one tooth in that black hole that’s meant to be a mouth. ‘It’s Handsome Jack!’

‘Told ya,’ says the bandit who’d dragged Jack from the crashed car out in the Badlands. ‘Told ya I weren’t lying.’ 

‘I thought you’d got wormbrain when you said over the radio,’ says Badbreath. 

‘Your ma’s got wormbrain,’ says Wormbrain.

Jack sniggers. Hey, it’s a classic.

‘Shut up!’ Badbreath’s foot hits Jack’s chest and _ shit _ Jack doesn’t remember his ribs getting busted, but it must’ve happened in the crash ‘cus his sternum is on fire. His pocketwatch sparks where it’s still clipped to his jacket, long past any cloaking capabilities.

‘He was babbling all the way here,’ Wormbrain whines. ‘I nearly shot him just to get a minute of quiet.’

‘Good thing you didn’t,’ Badbreath says. ‘Reckon people would pay good money to do it themselves.’

‘What? No? I was gonna give him to my girlfriend. For like, her birthday.’

‘Your- what, you mean, your girlfriend?’

‘Y’know. Maggie. The one who hangs out with Gutmasher. With the cute webbed toes?’

Badbreath rubs his hands over his face. ‘She ain’t your girfriend, bro.’

‘Yeah, but she might be if I get her a badass birthday present.’

‘Wow, Jack.’ Rhys chooses this moment to pipe up again. ‘_ These _ are the geniuses that managed to catch you, huh? _ This _ is the intellect it takes to capture Handsome Jack?’

‘Fuck the shuttup, Rhysie.’ Jack is mildly aware that the words aren’t quite in the right order there. ‘They didn’t _ catch _ me.’

‘Who are you talkin’ to, big man?’ Badbreath leans right in, and Jack won’t ever admit it, but he feels the slightest, smallest sliver of something that might be panic as the bandit’s fingers touch the metal clasp of his mask at his right temple. It’s enough that Jack’s uncooperative limbs finally respond to his jangling nerves: he slips the ropes and grabs Badbreath by the throat — hey, it’s muscle memory by this point.

‘Get those stubby little sausages away from my face,’ he snarls, scrabbling to get himself into a less vulnerable position, ‘or I’ll feed them to you. After I cut ‘em off, obviously.’ 

‘Smooth,’ he hears Rhys say, but before he can reply a hand grabs a fistful of his hair, pulling hard and Jacks head meets the floor with a —

***

HELIOS, RESIDENTIAL SECTOR

‘Suck it!’ Rhys crows, dropping the controller to get that victorious double fistpump. 

Vaughn looks at him in disgust. ‘Bro, you cheated.’

‘Nu uh. How would I even cheat at this, it’s not like I can use the eye to aim a blue crystalisk at your cart.’ He gives Vaughn his best puppy eyes, and surreptitiously closes the game guide he’d called up with his eye mid race. ‘I’d never cheat you, Bro.’

Vaugn coughs, a cough that sounds oddly like ‘Monopoly’.

Rhys doesn’t start a discussion about how Monopoly doesn’t count, and instead picks up his echo from where he left it on the coffee table. He’s not checking his messages, he knows there’s nothing new, because he would have seen the alert pop up. He’s just looking at his ECHO, like a normal, non-clingy, non-desperate —

‘So it was a pretty bad fight, huh?’ Vaughn says.

‘What? No. I mean — what d’you mean? What fight?’ Rhys drops his ECHO again and instead grabs a massive handful of popcorn, shoving it in his mouth and immediately choking. Once he’s stopped coughing, Vaughn continues like Rhys hadn’t nearly killed himself trying to avoid the topic.

‘You and Jack. You’ve been here for, like, twenty-four hours. I love you bro, but you don’t live here anymore. You need to go home, and quit avoiding him.’

Rhy groans, and flops backwards, draping himself over the arm of Vaughn’s couch, that used to be Rhys-and-Vaughn’s couch, back when Rhys was single and things were less complicated and Rhys wasn’t orbiting Handsome Jack like a… like a stupid moon. The penthouse couch isn’t lumpy, and it doesn’t have stains on it and it’s really comfortable for… doing _ stuff _ on, and by stuff Rhys means Jack, but.

But.

He didn’t spend an hour with his best friend trying to get the penthouse couch into an elevator to get it from the shopping district to residential. The penthouse couch doesn’t have a soda stains on it from when Vaughn made Rhys laugh so hard his drink came out his nose.

‘It’s really dumb,’ Rhys says.

‘What?’

‘The fight. It was dumb. Its wasn’t even a fight, really, just…’ Just Jack and Rhys, fucking up a good thing. Like they always do. ‘Jack turned the thermostat down like… ten minutes after I turned it up.’

Vaughn waited a second, before saying, ‘That’s all?’

‘Yes. Well, no. Cus he said I should just put on a warmer sweater, and I said he could take off some of his stupid layers, then _ he _ ’s like “oh, Rhysie, you need to learn to compromise!” And I said, “ _ I _ need to compromise? Maybe you shouldn’t have invited me to live with you if you’re not ready to share!” Rhys took a deep breath. ‘And then he says “well pumpkin” — but it’s in that sarcastic way he does, you know? Like, “Well, _ pumpkin _, I guess you can set the thermostat to whatever you want for a couple of days, because I’ve got some stuff to deal with down on Pandora.” And then he just left.’

Vaughn leans over, and pats Rhy’s shoulder.

‘Also,’ Rhys adds, ‘I hate his couch.’

***

PANDORA

It’s been at least twenty-four hours since Jack last had coffee, and he’s feeling it. He’s also feeling at least two broken ribs, a mild concussion, some blood loss from his busted leg, and dehydration. 

He’s also still seeing Rhys, who is a hallucination. He has to keep reminding himself about that last part. Especially when he woke up without his mask, because that was _ fun _.

‘So, what’s the plan?’ Rhy paces the cell. Well, not technically a cell — from the looks of things this was an Atlas break room once upon a time, complete with defunct coffee machine, but it’s now functioning as a cell for the motley assortment of bandits calling this abandoned facility home.

A hand with closely bitten nails snaps its fingers in front of his face. ‘Hey,’ Rhys says. ‘You’re not giving up on me, are you?’

‘Of course not.’ Jack braces himself, and uses the wall to lever himself to his feet. His left leg doesn’t seem to want to do any work, probably because there’s a significant amount of blood oozing from his shredded calf. ‘Vents.’

‘Vents?’

‘Yeah, dumdum. Vents. Crawl through ‘em, like in the ECHOvids. I’ve done it loads of times.’ He points at said vent, high up on the wall in the far corner. 

Rhys looks sceptical. ‘It’s pretty high up. How are you planning on reaching it?’

‘I figured you could give me a boost, cupcake,’ he smirks, ‘assuming that little noodle arm of yours can take all this.’

Rhy just looks at him, and it takes a moment.

‘...Fuck.’ Jack wants to sink back down to the floor. ‘I keep forgetting.’ He needs to get his goddamn head on straight. Get out, get back to Helios, rain moonshot hell down on this dump.

‘I wish I could touch you right now.’ He hates the sound of pity in Rhys’s voice.

‘Yeah? This doing it for ya, Rhysie?’

‘You know what I mean. Obviously, because I’m a figment of your imagination.’ Pausing, like he’d just realised something, Rhys bent down and pulled up his trouser leg. ‘Right down to these freaking awesome socks!’

The socks are garish and awful. They’re the ones Jack had ‘accidentally’ dropped behind the laundry basket so the cleanerbot would miss them.

‘It would be so much easier if you would just disappear like a good little hallucination,’ Jack groans, pressing his hands over his eyes. Right. Enough of this shit. He is getting out of here.

He doesn’t have to wait long before Wormbrain comes to his cell.

‘You’re waiting behind the door, aintcha?’ The bandit says, peering in through the tiny perspex panel. ‘I’m smarter than average, see? I know all your Hyperion tricks.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Jack says. ‘You got me there, cupcake.’

‘Get where I can see you.’

Jack obligingly shuffles to the back of the small room, in good view of the window.

‘I’ve gotcha fresh bandages and water,’ Wormbrain says, ‘but you won’t get them if you don’t say please.’

Jack fights the urge to roll his eyes, grits his teeth, digs his nails into his palms and spits the word out.

‘_Please _.’

The lock clunks. The handle twists. Jack covers his face and flings himself into the furthest corner to avoid the explosion.

It had been Rhys that had come up with the idea of cannibalising the remains of the pocketwatch and combining it with bits from the Atlas AmBrewsia™ coffee maker to make something go boom. Jack was kind of annoyed at how smart it was, until he realised that, as Rhys was _ his _hallucination, it was technically him that came up with it.

If anything, though, it was a little _ too _ smart. And a little too boom.

‘Jack!’ Rhys peers into his face. ‘Why aren’t you running? The other guy will be here any second, and there are probably more of them.’

Jack staggers upright. He can hardly see five foot in front of him from all the smoke. He’s pretty sure he’s only alive by virtue of the door blowing off its hinges and trying to bludgeon him to death before the fireball got to him.

His boots slide in the tacky red stain that is all that’s left of Wormbrain’s lower half, and he limps his way out of the smoking hole that was formerly the the cell door. Hot air makes his eyes water, and the skin normally covered by his mask stings. Beyond the ringing in his ears he hears yelling, and he heads in the opposite direction — for now. He needs a weapon, he needs water and his mask, and he needs to kill every son of a taint that so much as looked his way in the last however many hours.

‘C’mon Rhys,’ he says. ‘There’ve gotta be some sexy guns somewhere in this joint.’

By ‘sexy’, Jack certainly hadn’t mean this piece of junk shotgun Vladof had obviously crapped out after a rough night in Fyrestone, but beggars something something choosers, and whilst Handsome Jack has never been the sort to beg*, he knows that not every gun can be a Conference Call. 

‘That thing is gonna blow up in your face, Jack.’

Jack ignores Rhys and checks the clip — not as many rounds as he’d like, but certainly enough to take down someone who might be carrying more.

The room in which he’d found the gun was probably once a boardroom, long since converted to a makeshift bandit’s mess hall, smelling of stale chips and turning skag meat. Jack twists the cap off a bottle of water and —

‘Don’t —‘

— chugs the whole thing before choking most of it back up.

‘Little sips,’ Rhys says, and Jack would have shot at him if it weren’t for the limited ammo. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, scanning the room for anything else useful.

But he’s out of time. Running footsteps pound down the hall outside. Four sets — no, five? At least five. 

He upends a table and crouches behind it. Rhys settles beside him, close enough that Jack should be able to feel his body heat. But he can’t, of course.

Everything’s gonna be fine, because he’s the hero. But, just in case, he says, ‘Hey, Rhys…’

Rhys looks at him, his ECHO eye glowing, expectent look on his dumb face. When this is all over, Jack’s not letting him out of bed for a week except to answer the door for takeout.

He blinks back the black spots from the corners of his eyes. Nah, everything’s gonna be fine.

‘Nevermind.’ A thought strikes him — Rhys has never seen him without the mask. A shard of panic stabs at his gut.

‘So, what d’you think of it?’

‘Of what?’

Jack gestures to his face. Rhys smiles, that smile where just one side of his mouth quirks up, the one that Jack hasn’t figured out the meaning of yet, but he knows it's not a purely happy one.

‘I didn’t realise the moniker was meant to be ironic, Handsome.’

Yeah. Yeah, that’s what he thought.

——————————

*outside of limited bedroom situations


	2. Chapter Two

HELIOS PENTHOUSE 

The lights in the penthouse are off, the living room lit only by the cold glow of Elpis through the huge window. Rhys’s dirty mug from the day before is still on the kitchen counter, Jack’s sweater still draped haphazardly over the back of the couch.

Jack hasn’t been here since Rhys left. He’s not back from Pandora, and Rhys is starting to worry.

_ He didn’t say two days, precisely _ , Rhys tells himself. _ He said a couple. That could mean two and a bit, right? _So Jack would probably be back any second. 

He grabs the sweater off the couch and wanders to the bedroom, stripping down to his boxers and pulling the worn yellow material over his head. It catches on his metal arm, but he saves it before it can tear. Jack would kill him, or at least make him sew it up. 

‘We have robots for that!’ Rhys imagines himself saying, while knowing full well that Jack would insist on him doing it anyway because '_it's not the same, Pumpkin_.'

He thinks about jerking off, but he’s restless, disquieted by the feeling of rattling around in the huge apartment alone. He pads back to the living room, sits cross-legged at one end of the crouch and takes out his ECHO.

>hey. I miss you.

He hits send before he can delete it. Now all he has to do is wait for the read notif—

_ Ping _. The message turns red. 

>Jack?

_ Ping. ECHO device offline. _

Jack’s ECHO is never offline. Even when he’s stewing in his darkest of moods, or in the depths of some Pandoran cavern — Jack is always online.

‘_BLAKE _,’ Rhys all but yells into the phone.

‘Mr Strongfork,’ Mr Blake says, ever reasonable, ever stoic, ever the most annoying person Rhys has to interact with on the day-to-day other than Jack. ‘You’re his PA, and it’s the weekend — I thought it would be irrelevant —’

‘I’m his boyfr…’ Urgh. See, Blake absolutely _ knows _ that Jack and Rhys are together, because he’s walked in on _ stuff _ more than once, but it's not something they’ve ever officially acknowledged, and if Blake is anything it’s _ official. _ ‘... his _ live-in _PA, Blake. I think I deserve to be told when he’s been kidnapped!’

‘We don’t know that for certain,’ Blake says.

‘So his car is totaled, with no sign of Jack except,’ he pauses to keep his voice steady, ‘blood and drag marks. And you think there’s a chance he _ hasn’t _been kidnapped?’

‘As I’m sure you’re well aware, Mr Strongfork,’ Blake says, ‘there are a multitude of creatures on Pandora that could be responsible. We must hope, for the company’s sake, that Jack was able to make his way to safety. There’s every chance that he’s holed up somewhere waiting for a rescue team, which is why it is paramount that we exercise caution — going in all guns blazing, as it were, would only draw attention of the bandits, who know the terrain far more intimately than we do.’

‘Then I’ll come down there and help in the search,’ Rhys snaps. ‘My ECHOeye scanner is more than sophisticated enough to map terrain. Send me down there with some loaders and a couple of Infiltrators…’

‘Sorry, Mr Stongfork,’ Blake says, not sounding sorry _ at all. _ ‘But I must decline all of your requests.’

‘Oh _ must you _ ?’ Rhys is seething — whoever is responsible is going straight out an airlock. ‘On whose orders, exactly? Because I’m _ overriding _ them. Override code CU9c4K3. _ Hah _.’

‘On Handsome Jack’s orders, Mr Strongfork. I’m sorry. I’ll call you when we have news.’

Then Blake hangs up.

Rhys breathes in through his nose. He counts to ten. Then he rings Yvette, because fuck Handsome Jack, and his orders. How bad can Pandora be, really?

Fast travel makes Rhy’s stomach heave at the best of times, but travelling planetside from Helios? He’s never doing it again. He should have pushed for the moonshot transport instead, even if that would have attracted attention. Ugh.

‘Yvette?’ He slurs. 

‘You done puking?’ The ECHO lacks the clarity it has up on Helios: down here there’s a permanent static behind Yvette’s voice.

‘Mmhmm.’ He takes a deep breath of fresh air, but it's warm and full of dust. Fuck Pandora already, honestly. It’s the bleakest panorama he’s ever seen, except perhaps for the R&D cafeteria on a Monday morning. Huge shards of rock stick up from the parched ground like jagged teeth bared in a permanent, dusty snarl at the distant H-shaped space station floating far above them. 

No wonder Pandorans hate us, Rhys thinks. He’d be jealous as fuck too, stuck down here looking up. The sooner he finds Jack and gets him home, the better.

‘You still got the backpack?’ Yvette asks. 

Does he _ ever _. It’s like carrying a loaderbot on his back, and the weight of it threatens to topple him backwards if he doesn’t constantly lean against it.

‘Yes, and it better work — my neck already hates me forever.’

‘Aw, _ baby. _You’ll thank me when it teleports your asses back up here.’

‘_If. _’

‘It’s in its final stages of testing,’ Yvette reassures him. ‘According to the logs kept by R&D it now has a ninety-five per-cent success rate when it comes to re-materialising passengers at the other end. That’s up from ten percent just six months ago, that’s _ crazy _.’

‘Yay, the Hyperion tech development really _ is _ the best,’ Rhys says sarcastically. ‘We didn’t lose a bunch of developers last week because they tested a skag-mounted turret for fun.’

‘Would have been a nightmare for requisitions if that had worked. Can you imagine me herding skags?’

‘You won’t have to imagine if this doesn’t work,’ he mutters darkly.

‘Oh, what was that, Rhys? You _ don’t _ want me to send you a loader? You _ don’t _want me to wait around and activate the other portable Fast Travel device up here when you need it? You should have said earlier, I rainchecked a hot date for this.’

‘No! No, Yvette — you’re the best, most capable person, etc, we all worship you…’ Despite Rhys’s ten years of corporate bootlicking, Yvette never fails to be immune.

‘You owe me, Rhys. I’m upping it to five dinner dates. And you better not skimp on the sides.’ With that, she cuts the connection, leaving Rhys alone with the endless expanse of dirt and the rakks circling over head. He checks his coordinates. The crash site is two klicks south, at the point where the tyre tracks grew too faint for the hyperion satellites to follow, just over the ridge behind him. 

Rhys had made a rough estimate as to how far bandits could get on an average fuel tank for the vehicle size, making a probable area of 800 kilometres square. So, _ far. _ Using his eye, surface scans and aerial footage, he’d plotted likely bandit hideout coordinates into his GPS. Luckily, this particular area was comparatively sparsely populated. So, oh, only fifty or so possible locations.

The Catch-A-Ride terminal is scuffed, the buttons worn down to near nothing. Rhys selects an outrunner to digistruct, hoping it would be one that handled easily — living on a space station didn’t involve a whole lot of driving. He grimaces as he climbs in, feeling it judder and shake under him. 

_ Pandora — even the vehicles are feral! _

His ECHO bleeps.

‘Hey Blake,’ Rhys says. ‘It really sucks being stuck here at home while you guys do nothing to rescue Jack!’

Blake doesn’t bother with dismantling Rhys’s cover slowly. ‘Could you explain, Mr Strongfork, why your ECHO device is pinging off a Pandoran receiver while you’re _ stuck at home _on Helios?’

‘I could,’ Rhys says. ‘But it’s uh, high-level programmer stuff Blake, you wouldn’t understand it.’

‘I might not,’ Blake’s voice is ice cold, ‘but someone on the board here might.’

_ Shit, the board?! _ The _ board _ are listening to this?

‘_Explain. _ And while you’re at it, you wouldn’t know anything about a very valuable prototype being fraudulently signed out of the labs, would you?’

‘Uhm,’ Rhys says. ‘No?’

‘In Handsome Jack’s absence, acting in my capacity as his Vice President,’ Blake begins, ‘you can consider your employment terminated, Mr Strongfork. But, ah. We’ll still be wanting that FastTraveler™* back.’

_ Double shit. _They’re tracking him.

Just as Rhys forces the call to end, he hears a faint _ ping _ on the other end of the line.

‘_Location triangulated.’ _

_ ————- _

*The trademark is totally silent, but somehow Rhys can hear it anyway. Must be some upgrade he installed.

\--------

PANDORA, THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

_ ‘Traitor in area. Lethal force authorised. First Law disabled.’ _

Rhys tries not to breathe too loudly. He’s very aware of how insufficient his cover is, and how close to him the three GUN loaders are getting as he inches around the low rocky ledge. He’d been trying to make it to the first GPS point, but when he saw a moonshot land between his vehicle and his destination he’d swerved off, away from the rising pillar of dust and towards the nearest cover – a prominent outcropping of rock that he’d ruled out as a bandit hideout in his search.

Ohhh, but he’s going to make hell for Blake when he gets back. He’s going to generate _ so much _ unnecessary paperwork that Blake will be swamped for weeks. He’s going to recalibrate the drinks dispenser in his office to always make his coffee _ slightly _ too cold. 

He peeks over the ledge to see how far away the loaders are before ducking back down again before they spot him. He regrets getting off the outrunner, but he thought it would be easier to hide without it. Now it’s a smoking wreck, half melted from laserfire, and Rhys is stuck lugging a heavy backpack around an endless expanse of desert.

‘Yvette,’ he hisses into the receiver built into the fist of his robotic hand. ‘That loader you promised me would come in pretty handy right about now.’

‘Sure.’ Yvette’s reply is dry. ‘I’ll just pop it in the canon and fire it your way, then everyone will know you’ve got help up here. That sounds sensible.’

‘Y’know, you might not have anyone to help in a minute.’

‘Can’t you hack them? The hell did you get that stupid surgery for if you’re not going to use the implant?’

‘Blake seems to have got a hold of Jack's master override. I may be good, but y’know… Jack’s better. By like… a nanometre.’

‘Yeah, alright Rhys. Keep the dick measuring contest to the bedroom, will you? Look, I can –’

On the other side of Rhys’ rock, a small skag bursts from the crevice it had been cowering in, making a break for freedom. 

_ ‘Target in sights. Commencing combat.’ _

Rhys takes advantage of the burst of gunfire that follows to leg it to the next boulder along. Just before he gets there, his boot snags on a hunk of metal sticking out of the sand, and he tumbles ass over head into cover, coming to a halt on his face. At least it’s not the fast travel machine, right?

‘Nnngh,’ he whimpers, pushing up from the ground and raising a hand to gingerly prod at his lip. It’s already swelling, and his fingers come back smudged with red. He rolls over carefully to get to his feet without making a sound, and nearly screams.

He is right on the edge of a precipice. If he’d stumbled any further, he’d be as much red mess as the unfortunate skag.

‘_ Sshktkt _ ...hys? Can y... _ rrrktkt.’ _

_ ‘Yvette?’ _ His voice is perhaps a little high. He can’t tear his eyes from the slagging great _ sinkhol _e in front of him. He moves his knee back an inch, and a small rock goes rolling down to be swallowed up into the darkness.

‘Oh fuck,’ he moans. His ECHO makes a burst of static as Yvette tries again to get through.

Distantly, he hears the monotone declaration of a loader, _ ‘Bandit admits cowardice! _’ It sounds further away. Rhys can hardly bring himself to care that he seems to have escaped – for now, anyway. He focuses on his slow crawl backwards from the pit, sweat making his hair wilt from its careful styling and slicking wayward strands of it to his forehead. Great. He was kind of hoping to stride in and rescue Jack like a gorgeous conquering hero. Now his look is more likely going to come across as ‘sweaty dweeb who got punched in the mouth’. That’s if he can even find Jack, with only his feet and miles and miles of desert to search.

He’s still shaking as he gets to his feet, legs quivering as he tries not to look at the sinkhole. There are no loaders in sight, but he knows that doesn’t mean they’re gone. Still, he can relax a little.

‘Yvette?’ He tries calling her again, but the signal vanishes before the call even connects. Weird. There must be something in the area jamming comms. Something that didn’t show up when he scanned the area via satellite. 

He walks in the direction of the rocks that rise up almost vertically from the desert sand, forming pillars that had been shaped by the wind, and maybe even water many eons ago. There is what looks to be the start of a small canyon running between them. Rhys scans with his ECHO eye, looking for anything man made. Nothing – not at first, anyway, not on the first pass, but then … there! A Little electronic light blinks from a shadowed crevice. Rhys grins and zooms right in, eye whirring smugly to itself in his head. There is a door, the technology registering in his ECHO feed as Atlas. _ Bingo. _ Now all he has to do is find out what’s blocking his calls and get Yvette to–

He shouldn’t have walked with the eye zoomed in. His footstep echoes on something metal under the dirt, and the next one finds absolutely nothing, and then Rhys is falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments on the last chapter, they were much appreciated! Hope you enjoy this update just as much.  
Just a note for the timeline I'm running with for this setting - Jack survives BL2, the events of TFTBL don't happen and Rhys gets the PA job sometime between BL2 and Henderson's death. For the purposes of this fic, Mr Blake is acting VP of Hyperion as he is in 2. Hope that makes sense!


	3. Chapter Three

Rhys doesn’t pass out, which is a surprise in itself. Oh, it  _ hurts, _ sure, and his ass is going to be black with the bruise that he’s no doubt developing, but ...

Well, he’s alive. He’s conscious. He’s fallen into some Atlas robotics lab, by the look of things –  _ things _ being the pile of mutilated robot parts he’s landed on, limbs and chassis all stripped down to scrap for their wires and chips, the rest left to rust.

The air smells of stale cigarette smoke. He’s obviously not the first person to find these ruins, then. 

He takes inventory. Limbs all seem to be functioning, that’s nice, but there’s a scratch down the matte yellow paint almost the entire length of his prosthetic, and – oh, god – the pinky and fourth fingers are sticking out at a very wrong angle. Even if it’s the robotic arm, it still makes him queasy to look at.

He pets the back of his metal hand. ‘It’s okay baby,’ he says. ‘When we get home we’ll spend a day tuning up. Just you, me and –’

** _Boom_ ** .

The sound of the moonshot is distant, and yet still so very terrifying. He tries to roll off the scrap heap but something heavy is anchoring him, so he’s stuck on his back.

‘Shit,’ he says, realising exactly what it is the same moment as the stitching in one strap of the backpack tears, freeing him from the dead weight. Rhy flails, maintaining his balance (mostly) and drags the precious device free of the debris.

‘C’mon, c’mon …’ 

It  _ looks _ intact. 

‘Guess we’ll find out sooner or later,’ he says to himself. There’s a part of him – not a small one – that wants to use the teleporter here and now. Jack’s probably  _ fine _ , like Blake says, and Rhys isn’t suited to planetside action, like Jack says.

_ ‘No ice cream on Pandora, babe. You’d die in a week.’ _

But … what if he isn’t fine? Jack always  _ says _ he’s fine, but Rhys knows that’s not always true. 

‘Urgh.’ He shakes off the thoughts sticking to him like slag. It doesn’t matter anyway. With no ECHOnet access, there’s no way to coordinate with Yvette to use the FastTraveller. He can’t get back, with or without Jack.

There’s a spatter of gunfire somewhere in the complex. Rhys’ eye maps it in a rough blueprint it’s generating as he creeps through the narrow access tunnels, working his way towards the surface. The deeper levels house generators, storage rooms, miles of pipes and wiring, and nothing of interest. The wires and pipes are all heading up, though, and the power they’re carrying is headed somewhere on a floor closer to the surface.

Rhys quickly starts to miss the stale, musty air of the lower levels when he reaches the Atlas facility proper. The corridors are wider, lighter, and stink to high heaven – bitter smoke, something rotten, and the unmistakable metallic tang of blood. 

His eye overlays a bright blue line on the wall, where the wires with the most power running through are hidden behind the metal panels, and he follows it to a heavy metal door. It’s not one he needs to hack, as someone has helpfully shot off the keypad at some point in the past, leaving a hole the size of his head where the lock system once was. He peers through it. There’s a light on inside, but no one seems to be in there; just a humming bank of computers, a cluttered desk and some sort of cot set up.

The door is stiff, but opens when Rhys pulls with his metal arm, even minus the two fingers. He realises pretty quickly that the room is now some bandit’s sleeping quarters – there’s just one bed, so he figures its someone important enough to get their own room. Filthy clothes and broken bits of body armor are strewn everywhere, and the desk functions as some sort of trophy-collection-slash-junk-display. But Rhys has eyes only for the buzzing machine as the heart of the room. It’s an unremarkable thing, so much bulkier than ones he’s used to at Hyperion, and old – so  _ old. _

He’s past its defences in seconds. The mainframe inside is a bit like the building that hides it: cluttered and rambling and plastered with Atlas branding. Rhys wishes he had time to download the data in its banks because he’d be willing to bet on there being some juicy stuff tucked away amongst the retro Atlas release reports (and also because going through it would make his little data-mining heart oh so happy – being Jack’s PA is great, no doubt about it, and Rhys is waaaay up that corporate ladder while Vasquez eats his dust back in Propaganda Securities, but sometimes he misses the old grind), but he’s well aware that time is currently a precious commodity.

With a thought he slips around the failsafes and initiates the shutdown sequences. He feels kind of bad about it, but it’s quicker than taking time to isolate whatever is cutting off his ECHO connection. Vents that have been pumping out stale air for fifty-odd years wheeze out one last gasp and fall silent.

‘I’ll come back for you,’ he promises. His HUD pings happily as connection to the ECHOnet is restored and he allows himself a relieved sigh.

He almost doesn’t see it, but something makes him look back before he leaves the room, glancing at the desk of bandit trophies he’d overlooked before. He locks eyes with it, and it feels like someone has shot him with an ice elemental round.

Jack’s mask. It could be a replica, he tells himself as he picks it up. But he knows it’s the real thing. He’s never seen Jack without it, never held it – it's lighter than it should be from how it looks. But it feels the same as it always has against his finger tips, that same mystery polymer skin that feels almost-real. When Rhys touches Jack's face it usually feels warm, but not now.

_ Not conducting body heat _ , says his rational brain, while the irrational, panicky bit screams  _ DEAD. _

Despite his best instincts, he knows that the way to find Jack now is to follow the gunfire. He fumbles with the T4s-R in the holster on his hip and wishes he’d paid more attention to Jack’s lessons in the shooting range instead of staring at his butt. Sure, the lessons were mostly just Jack posing and showing off, with very little teaching going on, but Rhys hadn’t exactly  _ helped _ , had he?

The safety, he thinks, is off. That’s a start.

‘Jack. Jaaaack.’ 

Jack swats irritatedly in the direction of Rhys’ voice. Perky, morning-person son of a taint. He’s got what feels like the worst hangover of his life, or maybe he’s contracted some Pandoran plague. Either way, Rhys has obviously stolen the blankets ‘cus he’s fucking  _ freezing _ .

The more awake Jack gets, the more uncomfortable he feels. It takes him a while to realise that he’s not actually lying down, or on his bed – he’s leant up against something metal and unforgiving. Sleep is more reluctant to leave him than normal, his eyes won’t open and he keeps fading in and out, and everytime he’s back it’s because of that damn  _ ‘Jack _ !’

It sounds like Rhys is right next to him, but when he hits out, his hand feels nothing but air. 

He makes an effort to open his eyes. The room is blurry, and that’s not just because he’s not wearing his mask, with its compensation lens for his blind eye. No, it's his good eye – like something’s glueing it shut – and he feels it break apart when he forces his lids open. He feels around it with a clumsy hand, and recognises the tell-tale flake of dried blood under his nails.

There is blood everywhere. Unless it’s somehow stained his vision, there is blood on the floor, on the toppled furniture, on the bodies. Oh, there are also bodies.

Memories trickle back in, patchy and incomplete. The car crash. Badbreath and Wormbrain. His escape, partially executed. Where is Rhys?

‘I’m here,’ Rhys says, rippling a little in Jack’s swimmy vision. ‘Hello, Handsome.’

He hears an echo of his words in Lillith’s voice. Makes him flinch. The memory of the moment in the vault on Elpis when the searing brand impacted his face plays on a loop while Rhys talks about finding a way out.  _ Hello, Handsome. Hello, Handsome. _

‘Shut up,’ he croaks. Rhys does, and so does Lillith. She’s  _ here _ . He thought she was dead, but she’s right there. She smirks, gives him a little wave from where she leans against a gore-splattered wall.

His numb hands reach for the shotgun but he can’t find it. Rhys smiles, and wanders up to the siren like she’s not a psychotic freakin’  _ child murderer. _

‘What are you waiting for, Cupcake?’ Jack snarls at Rhys. ‘Kill her!’ She’s right there, she’s not even freakin’ armed. 

_ What is he waiting for? _

Rhys rounds a corner and walks straight into a bandit.

‘Shit!’ The bandit yelps, and Rhys shrieks and reflexively pulls the trigger on his pistol, sending a laser blast straight into the guy’s chest.

It is close range, very close – Rhys sees the bandit's eyes actually bulge out of his sockets as the elemental round fries him. For a moment, the corridor is lit up electric blue. Then Rhys is left with the tingling smell of ozone, and a smoking corpse at his feet.

The smallest of whimpers escapes him.

Rhys hasn't killed anyone before – well, not  _ directly _ . Indirectly, sure, but who on Helios with a position above vice janitor or intern hasn’t? (Honestly, Rhys isn’t even sure about the interns – some of those guys are cutthroat.) He’s seen Jack kill people. But this is … different. 

He steps over the body, avoiding the growing puddle of blood spreading on the floor below it. He tries not to gag.

There’s a noise up ahead that makes him freeze – a small thud, a muffled voice. The corridor ahead is long, and he can’t see anyone, but he’s pretty sure there’s a doorway on the left. He holds the T4s-R out in front of him and is pleasantly surprised by how little his hands are shaking now. 

He smells the blood before he swings round the corner. At first he thinks there can’t be anyone alive in this kind of carnage, but a glimpse of yellow sweater and the shape of a familiar body has him sprinting across the room.

‘ _ Jack!’ _

He’s half propped up against the wall, struggling to raise his head from his chest at the clattering of Rhy’s entry, face twisted by pain and by … by the…

When Rhys looks back on this moment in the following days, he is enormously glad that Jack is too out of it to remember his boyfriends first words on seeing what he hid under his mask.

‘What happened to your  _ face _ ?’ It's a scar like nothing he’s ever seen, and he’s met Wilhelm.

He crouches at Jack’s side, puts a careful hand oh his chest.’

‘It’s ok –'

Jack lurches like he’s been shocked, a large hand swinging toward Rhys' head. It's the first punch Rhys has ever caught in his life and will probably be the last because he only get it because it’s so slow and clumsy.

‘Jack, it’s me, it's me.’ Cybernetic hand on Jack's bruised jaw, he turns Jack’s head so he’s looking at him. Ignoring the cloudy white stare of Jack’s blind eye, he focuses on the remaining blue one, wondering absently if Jack’s heterochromia is a choice like Rhys’ own, or if he’s mimicking what came  _ before _ .

‘R’ys,’ Jack slurs out.

‘Yes, you moron, so don’t you go hitting me again.’

Jack’s eye flicks between Rhys’ face and the doorway, like he’s struggling to understand something. His perfect hair is a mess, clumped with blood on one side with strands falling in his face, and Rhys smooths them out of the way. ‘Just gotta hold on for a minute, Jack, and we’ll have you back on Helios. Can you do that?’

Jack is a mess, but Rhys knows nothing about first aid beyond sticking a Band-Aid on it, and he doesn’t think Jack would appreciate one of those right now, even if it  _ is _ latex-free from the Helios gift shop and Jack loves stuff with tiny versions his face on.

He takes a hypo from the backpack, breaking the protective casing. At the sight of the (admittedly probably unnecessarily large) needle, Jack squirms and swats at him again.

‘Stop that, you baby. Let me stab you.’

Despite the fuss, Jack just grunts as Rhys jabs the needle into the top of his thigh, avoiding the mess that is his lower leg. Rhys sees the moment that the painkillers hit; Jack shudders and some of the tension leaves his limbs. The boost to his body’s natural healing speeds won’t do much, not with the extent of his injuries, but the pain relief definitely won’t  _ hurt _ the situation.

He catches Rhys looking at him.

‘Hey, pumpkin,' Jack says.

‘Hey yourself.’ Rhys starts to unpack the FastTraveller. The interface screen is cracked and he bites his lip, praying that the damage is purely cosmetic.

Jack’s hand lands on his hip – still clumsy, but not trying to hit him this time. He just sort of… pets Rhys’ side.

‘I can touch you,’ he says. ‘S’good.’ They must be some good drugs. He gives Rhys a wide smile. His teeth are stained pink. 

‘Oh god, stop grinning that’s nasty.’

Jack does stop. He looks like he’s just remembered something, and he looks about wildly, eyes almost rolling, one arm shoving at the wall in an attempt to get upright, ‘ _ Where is she?’ _

_ ‘ _ Where is who – Jack, calm down …’ If Rhys has learned anything from dating Handsome Jack, it's that telling the guy to calm down never works. In fact, Jack is much more likely to take it as a challenge to further act out.

‘She was  _ right there _ , you saw her!’

‘I … I’ve only just got here …’ Rhys grabs Jack's wrists, holding his hands firmly to stop him waving them around and doing himself further injury, and it is a testament to his level of distraction that Jack lets him.

‘No, the  _ other _ you, dumdum.’ He’s still looking, eyes flickering from one corner of the room to the other, but his initial alarm (or, dare Rhys think it, fear?) lapses into more of a paranoid hyperawareness.  _ That _ , Rhys can deal with. The nonsense Jack is spouting  _ is  _ a little worrying, but unsurprising given the head injury and blood loss.

‘Well, you see other me again or … who was it?’

‘Lillith.’ Jack hisses the name like a curse.

‘Right, well, you see other me or Lillith again, give me a shout and I’ll shoot them. Deal?’

Jack snorts.

‘Hey! I shot a guy on the way in here, I’ll have you know. He’s very dead now.’

‘Wow, ain’t you the hero, Kiddo.’

Rhys turns his attention back to the FastTraveller. He sighs in relief as the screen lights up. He navigates the menu; it's a little rough and ready, what with being in its test phase, but eventually he gets the desired message blinking in front of him:

_ Awaiting receiver connection. _

‘Wassat, Rhys?’ Jack cranes his neck, trying to shuffle closer to get a look.

‘Oh you know,’ Rhys says, ‘just some experimental tech I stole from R&D. No biggie, right?’ Not like Jack is in any position to murder him for stealing company property right now.

Jack gives him a sly look that Rhys doesn’t like _ at all. _

‘Murder  _ and _ theft, Rhysie? Naughty boy …’ He makes a tutting noise. ‘Pr’aps I should report you, unless you wanna somehow persuade me not to …’

Oh, Rhys is nipping  _ that _ in the bud  _ right now _ .

‘Gross, Jack, not when your leg is falling off. Also, I’m busy trying to rescue you.’

Before Jack can respond with anything worse, Rhys calls Yvette. The ECHO rings and an agonisingly long moment passes before she answers.

‘Rhys?’

He’s never been so glad to hear her voice. ‘Better be ready with that device, 'Vette.’ 

‘You’re alive.’ Her sigh sounds like a rush of static at the other end of the line. ‘That’s a relief. I was starting to have to think how I was gonna spin this whole thing to my advantage.’

‘Love you too, asshole. We’re ready to come home, and uh –’ he shoots a look at Jack, who is squinting at him suspiciously for whatever reason, his face pale and clammy. ‘We’re gonna need a med team pretty fast.'

‘Noted.’ There’s a sudden electronic hum on her end. ‘Ready when you are,’ she says, and breaks the call.

Rhys scoots to Jack's side, mostly ignoring the blood that soaks into the knees of his (expensive) trousers.

‘Figured you’d, uh, want this. Before we’re back on Helios.’ He holds up the mask he’d rescued from the bandit’s trophy hoard. He can’t read the expression that flashes across Jack face, but the other man reaches out an eager hand.

‘I can …?’ Rhys says.  _ Asks _ .

Jack blinks at him, then gives a hesitant nod. Rhys leans in. Jack’s cheekbone is bruised and swollen. He hisses as Rhys clips the mask in place.

‘Sorry, sorry.’ He strokes the side of Jack’s face.

‘Rhys,’ Jack says.

‘Hmm?’

He looks like he’s floundering for words. Rhys has never seen  _ that  _ before. Jack always has plenty to say.

‘I… you’re…’ he shuffles, then grunts in pain. 

‘Jack?’

‘Your ass looks good in those pants, that’s all,’ he says quickly.

And Rhys thought they were having a moment.

‘Let’s get you home,’ he says, and presses the button.

Nothing happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! Hope I managed to keep Jack in character this chapter, it has been a challenge. Hope you enjoyed it.  
Next/final update will be a little longer coming - I'm on holiday next weekend and it has been A MONTH - but it will be up before Christmas. In the meantime, check out my twitter for sporadic art or just say hi.  
Fic rating updated for an increase in violence but uh, mostly preemptively for the final chapter ;)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! Obviously this is later than I said it would be - I'm blaming Christmas and the plague for that. One chapter left, as it extended on me a little bit. Thanks for the kudos and the comments, they mean a tonne :)

PANDORA, DISUSED ATLAS FACILITY

‘Oh – fu – uck _ you _, Rhys!’ 

Jack is officially the worst patient of all time. He kicks out with his injured leg, like his calf muscles aren’t shredded, and nearly socks Rhys in the side of the head. Rhys slaps his thigh reflexively, hitting the makeshift tourniquet, and gets a whole torrent of verbal abuse in return. While Jack is distracted with insulting Rhys’ entire family back to the first corporate war, he finishes tying the bandages. It’s a messy job, when it’s all done, but Rhys thinks that is more because of Jack’s flailing than his own skills being sub par.

He hadn’t really imagined that rescuing Jack would involve so much resistance on his boyfriends part.

‘We need to get to the surface,’ he says. ‘The FastTraveller can’t get a lock on us. Stupid piece of crap.’

‘Careful, that’s high quality Hyperion tech you’re badmouthing there cupca – watch the ribs, asshole!’ This last part came as Rhys tried to help him to his feet, Jack leaning heavily on his flesh shoulder. 

Rhys loosened the grip of his metal hand on Jack’s side a little guiltily. ‘What you gonna do, airlock me?’ 

Jack just sneers in response. He’s really not on his usual form, and his eyes a little glazed – either from pain or the painkillers, Rhys isn't sure. He finds himself missing their usual swift-paced exchange of insults; having the upper hand this way is less satisfying than he’d ever imagined it could be.

At last, he has Jack upright and mobile, for a given value of the word. The FastTraveller is packed up into the bag on his back, and his free hand holds his pistol ready.

He's as ready as he’s ever going to be.

‘Okay, we can do this.’ He glances sideways at Jack, who looks half asleep, and gives him a nudge.

‘Wha? Oh. Yeah, babe. Totally. Got this.’ 

Not the most sincere response ever, but he’ll take it.

Moving Jack is like moving an armful of giant cooked noodles, if the noodles had a mind of their own and kept trying to go the wrong way, or stop and look at something rusty and interesting. So, not like noodles at all really. 

Rhys’ stomach growls.

Perhaps Jack’s state is best semi-liquid. A non-Newtonian fluid, Rhys thinks, as he once again stops him sinking to the floor and hauls him back up to shoulder height.

‘Don’t think I won’t drag you,’ he threatens.

Jack kisses his neck. ‘Drag me to bed,’ he says.

‘A hospital bed? Sure.’

‘You’re no fun, Rhys. You used to be fun,’ Jack grouses as Rhys steers him around a corner. The stairs to the ground floor are in sight. Steam billows from a broken pipe on the wall, and when Rhys drags Jack through the cloud, Jack digs his heels in.

‘Nonono, stay. I like this, it’s warm.’

‘I’ll cremate you,’ Rhys says. ‘Then you’ll be warm.’ It’s a concern though, because Jack _ is _ warm. He typically runs hot, but right now his skin feels like the casing of a CPU with a busted fan. He’s still not sweating either, even though Rhys had given him all the water he’d brought.

‘Shoulda seen it Rhys,’ Jack says. He’s monologuing about … something. How he escaped from the bandits, Rhys thinks. Maybe. It’s a little jumbled. ‘Used my shield and this shitty Atlas coffee machine, and the guy was like: "stand where I can see you!" And I was like "sure!" And then – then he opened the door and …’ Jack tries to slap his bad knee, so hilarious does he find his own recounting, but Rhys stops him just in time. ‘Boom! And then you were like "Jack, no!" Cus you totally thought I was dead, cupcake. But I was under the freakin door.’

Rhys is … not sure how he ended up in this story, but he figures its best not to question Jack at this stage. ‘We’ve got to go up the stairs,’ he says instead. ‘Can you make it?’

‘Fuckin Atlas cheapskates. Couldn’t have added elevators, or fast travel.’ Jack skirts the question.

‘Jack –'

‘I can do it, a’ight? I’m not some weakass … I’unno. Not a claptrap. I can do stairs. Been doin’ stairs my whole life.’

Rhys has also been doing stairs his whole life, but right now this particular set is looking less like a simple short flight upward and more like an insurmountable mountain.

‘Hold onto the rail,’ he says.

‘Bossy.’ Jack grabs the rail, though.

‘We’ll take the first one on three, okay? One …’

Jack goes on two, and it’s all Rhys can do to stop him braining himself as he tumbles forward. ‘Jack! Can’t you just _ listen _ to me, for once in your life?’ Rhys is … oh, he’s almost had it. He wants to leave the pathetic asshole down here to _ rot _.

‘I listen to you all the time, cupcake,’ Jack says. ‘You got a real pretty voice. And y’know. You’re smart.’ He’s sprawled on the stairs, managing to look mostly comfortable and not like he just fell. His hair hangs in sweaty strands in his face, the normally tidy grey streak tangled in with the rest of it. He looks older, the lines in his skin and his mask highlighted by dirt and blood and exhaustion.

Rhys sighs, bending at the knees to help him up. ‘Come on. Not far now.’ On the way up, he finds a not-gross bit of Jack’s mask and presses a quick kiss there. ‘Asshole,’ he says.

‘Y’know, it’s kind of hot, you shoving me around like this,’ Jack muses.

‘Jack, absolutely nothing about this situation is hot.’

Jack actually _ pouts _. ‘Aww. Not even a little? A little teeny tiny boner, Rhysie?’

Rhys almost drops him there and then.

They make it to the top, barely. Jack is back to drifting in and out of consciousness, and however uncooperative he’d been before sure beat hauling his deadweight around. Rhys wishes he’d actually taken up Vaughn's offer of bro time at the gym.

(‘That’s not bro time, bro,’ Past-Rhys had said. ‘That’s torture. Pass the ice cream?’)

Yvette better be right about the signal for the FastTraveller. Rhys doesn't fancy their chances if he has to drag Jack across the desert to civilisation.

He takes a minute to catch his breath, then hefts Jack into a more comfortable position dangling off his shoulder. 

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Wake up.’

‘Sleeping now,’ Jack says into his vest. ‘Come back later.’ Helpful as ever. A glance down at Jacks leg shows that he’s bled through Rhys’ bandaging job already, and there's a scuffed, one-footed trail of blood leading back down the stairs.

‘Sh’up,’ Jack says.

‘I didn't say anything!’

‘You too. Both yous. Fuckers.’

‘Jack …’ Rhys is definitely the only one here. 

‘I _ know _ the two of you are plotting against me,’ Jack hisses against his neck.

Oookay. Paranoid Jack. Definitely more familiar territory than seeing-things-Jack.

‘Well, you can airlock me later for it,’ he promises.

‘You bet I will. Traitor.’ And even though Rhys knows that Jack isn’t thinking clearly right now, it still hurts.

Yvette chooses that moment to make Rhys’s day that little bit worse.

‘You might wanna hurry, boys,’ she says. ‘They’ve found me. I’ve locked the door, but …’

Despite the poor quality of the call, Rhys can still make out the roar of a cutting torch. ‘Move!’ he snarls, half-pushing, half-hauling Jack and hoping that he doesn't do any further damage they can’t undo.

Stepping out into the hot Pandoran sun blinds him for a moment. The interior of the facility had been comparatively cool, and it's like someone has dropped a heated blanket over his face.

‘S’good,’ Jack says. 

‘I’ll tell you later that you said that,’ Rhys promises, ‘and you won’t believe me.’ He sees something yellow moving on the heat-blurred horizon, far away but approaching at a fast pace, even as a second and third wobble into existence. Vehicles, maybe scavs, probably Hyperion. If it was the latter, surely they’d rescue Jack. But he’s not too sure of what his own reception would be, and he knows well enough the Hyperion military’s reaction to surrendering parties. They are _ Jack _’s soldiers, after all.

It's now or never.

He dumps Jack on the ground and sets the FastTraveller up in record time, relief flooding through him as it pings with a positive connection to Helios.

_ At last. _He proffers his organic eye for the retina scan.

_ ‘Access denied, Bandit Scum!’ _The FastTraveller declares happily.

‘Um, what?’

‘Yeah,’ Jack chimes in. ‘What’d you call him?’

‘_ Only employees of Hyperion may interface with this device _ ,’ the FastTraveller chirps. ‘ _ Lowlife skagfucker.’ _

‘Wow, she is _ rude _ ,’ Jack says. ‘’Sides, you _ are _ a Hyperion employee. So she’s broken _ and _rude. How t’fuck did this thing get past QC?’

‘Uhhh about that,’ Rhys says. ‘Blake fired me.’

‘Blake _ what _?’

A burst of light in the sky catches his eye – a moonshot. In a moment his ECHOeye calculates the impact zone and it is _ close. _ Too close for comfort. 

‘Look at the scanner!’ He says.

‘Wha’?’

With no time to explain, he grabs Jack's face between his hands and (adding to today's long, long list of airlockable offences) turns his head.

The retina scanner bleeps.

‘_Insert greeting for Handsome Dicklord here!_' the FastTraveller says, in what is recognisably Jack’s least favourite R&D guy’s voice. Rhys cringes internally, and adds a mental note to post a vacancy with HR. If Jack rehires him after this, that is.

_ ‘Travel Commencing. Awaiting confirmation from secondary device.’ _

‘Yvette,’ Rhys says, ‘now would be a great time to press the button.’

There is no response.

‘Yvette, _ now _ please!’

Nothing. The scream of the approaching moonshot gets louder. He grabs Jack, pulling him close like that would do anything, like Rhys’ noodley little body would have any protective function against the impact of a –

‘_ Confirmation received,’ _the FastTraveller says, and Rhys is, for the first time ever, relieved to feel his body being disintegrated.

HELIOS, A STORAGE CLOSET

The relief doesn’t last. That’s the thing about experimental tech – it’s generally not focused on the comfort side of things yet. The first thing Rhys is aware of when they rematerialise is how much his throat hurts. 

That would be from all the screaming.

The world is chaos and noise. Someone has set his skin on fire, or maybe that's just how having your skin knitted back together from a digital imprint feels.

‘_ Rhys _!’

His arms are full with the heavy weight of a body, like an anchor dragging him into reality. 

‘_ Don’t – he needs help you morons!’ _Yvette’s voice is faint, not because of the ECHO reception this time, but instead because she’s only on the periphery of Rhys’ awareness.

He’s soaked in something – they both are. His lips taste like copper and the sea, and he presses an ear against Jack’s chest, listening for a heartbeat.

‘_ Get back, Lady!’ _

_ ‘ _Shut up!’ Rhys rasps, his voice barely a whisper across the sandpaper of his throat. ‘I can’t hear.’ His fingers catch the weak thread of a pulse in Jack’s throat, and he shudders with relief.

_ ‘Step away from the CEO, sir!’ _

He looks up. A circle of yellow-armoured soldiers look back at him. So do the dark muzzles of lots of guns.

Something bangs and Rhys flinches, but it’s not a gun – its a door.

‘Don’t shoot, you idiots!’ It's Blake, with his dumb hair spiked like devil horns and wearing his hideous striped suit with the over-eager collar. Rhys has never been so relieved to see someone who tried to have him killed.

‘You’ll hit Jack, you class A morons,’ Blake says.

Right. Of course he’s concerned about Jack. At the sound of his name, he twitches in Rhys' arms.

‘Paramedics are outside – make sure they get the CEO to Medical unaccosted.’ 

_ God _, Rhys thinks, a starchy hospital bed and reheated nutrient paste sound like heaven right about now.

‘… and escort Mr Strongfork here to P-Level.’

P-Level sounds familiar, Rhys thinks, and not like hospital familiar.

‘You’re putting him in _ jail _?’ Yvette sounds outraged. 

Ah yes, P-Level. P for penitentiary.

‘That is what we do with _ traitors _ and tech thieves,’ Blake points out. 

‘He was _ helping!’ _

‘And so were you, I recall.’ Blake turns his pale gaze on her and Yvette’s mouth snaps shut.

‘Can someone just get me to the friggin’ hospital,’ Jack says. 

Rhys almost leaps out of his skin. ‘Jack!’

‘Jeez, a little quieter babe. Thassit.’ A hand pats Rhys on the cheek, nearly ending up in his eye. ‘Don’t worry 'bout the jail thing. Blake's only joking. _ Right _, Jimmy?’

'But _ Sir _–'

Jack struggles to sit up, shoving Rhys in the chest as he does so. He’s acting casual, but up close Rhys can see the shake in his muscles as he draws on the last of his energy, a pale grey tinge to his skin around the mask.

‘_ Hospital _, Blake. Presidential suite. Get an extra bed in there. And when I’m not losing a shit-ton of blood, then we’re gonna have a serious, serious talk.’

Blake's lips pull into a tight, thin line. He nods, and a yellow armoured soldier opens the door. Medical staff pour into the room, but before they reach them, Jack grabs Rhys’ hand and gives it a quick squeeze. He lets go and they are immediately overcome by people with gurneys and hypodermics. Jack almost immediately confirms Rhys’ suspicions that he is, in fact, a terrible patient by picking a fight with a paramedic.

‘Careful where you’re point that thermometer, sweetheart, the only thing goin’ up my ass is Rhys’ –’

Now would be a perfect time to pass out, Rhys thinks. So he does.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! Sorry it took an age - there are a couple of characterization moments here I'm still a little ehhh about, but I figured if I didn't post it now I would be editing forever. Also: I know nothing about CEOing or corporate stuff in general, which will be obvious in this chapter. Please kindly suspend your disbelief and accept my bluffing.  
Come chat to me on twitter @erry_nah if you feel like it :)

Jack doesn’t lose his leg, which is a good start to his recovery, and Rhys is very grateful because the thoughts of what modifications Jack could come up with for a cybernetic replacement are horrifying (Rhys does  _ not _ need rockets firing off accidentally while they’re in bed, thank you very much).

They do need to graft some new muscle though, and Jack is adamant they use his own cells, even though that will require a longer wait before the operation – which could fuck up the whole process.

‘The hell I’m using  _ something you grew earlier _ ,’ Jack growls at the doctor. ‘I don't know who it’s come from – they could be a loser. They could be  _ poor. _ I don’t want  _ poor _ cells anywhere near my freakin’ awesome quadrillionaire cells, you got that?’

They settle for artificial, lab-grown muscle. Rhys is allowed to stand next to the bed as the anaesthetist does his thing, watching as Jack – maskless and scowling – fights the drag of the anaesthetic every inch of the way.

‘S’not workin’,’ he slurs. ‘Takes more’n that to knock me out. You’ll have to ... gimme a bit … more’n … ‘

A nurse prods him warily. Once they’re sure he’s safely out, they wheel him into surgery.

Without Jack, the presidential hospital suite is peaceful. Other than the beds, it looks like a high-end hotel room: gleaming chrome floor; sleek furniture; huge glass windows like the ones in Jack's office, except all you can see is space. No planets, no moons, just endless stars.

Rhys sits crosslegged on the bed, taking advantage of the lack of stuff to do by dismantling his arm and cleaning out every grain of sand that had snuck in while he was planetside. There are some dings in the panelling that he’d rather not be there, but nothing else is unfixable; even the bent fingers only need a wire or two replacing. He recalibrates everything, just for the fun of it mainly, but also to hear the motors whirring smoothly, free of grit.

It feels like the surgery is taking hours, but when he checks only one has passed. The peaceful silence is starting to become an oppressive one, so he calls Vaughn.

He answers on the first ring, like he’d been sitting there waiting for it, which is slightly concerning considering Rhys has been back on Helios for more than twenty-four hours already.

‘ _ Rhys! _ ’

‘Hey, bro? How are, uh. Things? I’m alive, by the way. Not in prison.’

Vaughn makes a strangled sound.

‘You … okay?’ Rhys asks.

‘Ha!’ Vaughn’s voice is kinda squeaky, the way it goes when he’s talking about a looming deadline, or retelling the story of how he ran into Jack in a hallway that time. ‘ _ Ha! _ That’s funny, Rhys!’

Rhys senses that he might, in fact, not be Vaughn’s favourite person right now.

‘You know what happens, when your ex-roommate steals company property and runs away to Pandora? They search your apartment. You know what happens when Hyperion soldiers search your apartment? Stuff gets broken.’

‘Oh no.' 

‘Oh yes,’ Vaughn says venomously. ‘ _ Oh yes, Rhys _ .’

‘Not the Bunkers and Badasses set up, bro? Not  _ Dragons Keep _ ?!’ Man, Rhys remembers Vaughn slaving over that terrain build for hours. 

‘I hoarded TP tubes for months to build that fort!’ Vaughn says. ‘ _ Months _ . And one of them trod on Yvette's sorcerer mini, so you’ll have to break the news to her about that.’

The very thought of how that particular conversation would go makes Rhys cringe.

‘You saved Jack, though?’ Vaughn says after an awkward few moments of silence. ‘Kinda makes you a hero, right?’

Rhys thinks about it. He doesn’t feel much like a hero, really. Not like he thought he would when he went down there, not like he planned. But then, few things go as Rhys plans them to.

‘I dunno,’ he says. ‘Think I’ll leave the hero stuff to Jack in the future.’

If he thinks that will assuage Vaughn's wrath, he’s wrong – in fact, his friend seems  _ more _ pissed off at the idea.

‘No way! You better at least milk this for all it’s worth, bro. You saved  _ his _ ass. Handsome Jack almost died at the hands of some small-time bandits, but he didn’t, cus of  _ you _ .’

He’s … well, he’s right, isn’t he? Yeah. Rhys went down to Pandora – he went on the  _ run _ ! – and he didn’t get mauled, or beaten, or shot, or starved to death. 

‘Yeah!’ Rhys says, confidence flooding back. ‘I  _ killed _ a man to save Jack’s lousy butt. He  _ owes _ me!’

Vaughn squeaks in horror. ‘You wh–?’

‘Thanks for the pep-talk, bro,’ Rhys says earnestly. ‘I don’t know how, but you always make me feel better, y’know? I’ll fix Dragon’s Keep, I promise.’ Hell, Rhys will blackmail Jack into buying him the official model if he has to.

‘Rhys, you  _ killed _ –?’

‘Catch you later, buddy!’

  
  


They wheel Jack back in hours later, groggy and hating the universe due to a massive headache from the anaesthetic – even unlimited riches can’t save a man from medical side effects.

When Rhys walks over, Jack barely gets two words out – both of them unrepeatedly rude – before he falls asleep. It's hardly the gratitude Rhys was hoping for, but that's nothing time and painkillers won’t solve, probably.

He’s never waited at a hospital bedside before. He doesn’t know what to do, really, or even if Jack will expect him to be there when he wakes up because he’s his boyfriend, or if he’ll be really pissed off that Rhys has been sitting there for ages looking at his dumb sleeping face because he’s  _ Jack _ .

(There was that one time when, on a rare instance of Rhys waking up first, he’d made the mistake of taking a photo of Jack drooling onto his pillow. On finding out, Jack had remotely deleted Rhys’ entire digital photo album, and marked him as a security risk on the Helios systems for an entire week. Rhys had never imagined that strip searches could become  _ boring. _ )

Jack’s face is creased in a frown, looking almost like the face of a stranger due to the foreign blue curve of the scar that bisects it. It’s part brand, part  _ crater _ ; the edges where the skin is a normal colour are calloused ridges of scar tissue. They look dry, and the skin around Rhys’ artificial shoulder joint itches in sympathy. Which gives him an idea.

_ Someone is touching his face. Fingers – he feels them trace the edge of the vault symbol, leaving a sensation of cool relief in their wake, kinda tingly. Kinda nice.  _

_ Hold on a freakin’ second. _

_ Someone is  _ touching  _ his  _ face –

Rhys shrieks as a large hand clamps around his wrist and wrenches him out of his chair. His face hits the bedside cabinet on the way down and he feels his bruised lip split open again. The next second he’s hauled back to his feet and staring into Jack’s face.

Jack is breathing like he’s been in a fight, sitting up (kind of), wild eyed and panting.

‘What the  _ fuck _ were you doing?’

‘Moisturising!’ Rhys squeaks. ‘Just  _ moisturising _ oh my god if you’ve broken my wrist over some  _ cream –’ _

Jack lets go, a blank expression coming over his face like someone closing the emergency shutters over a window. 

‘Not broken,’ he says. Rhys, massaging his wrist, agrees.

‘Did I –' he gestures at Rhys' lip.

‘No – yes, but also no. It just reopened, when I fell. Got it on Pandora actually,’ he says, retaking his bedside seat. ‘Y’know, when I was rescuing you. Which I didn’t do so you could –'

‘I know, I know, I …’ Jack's obviously having trouble maintaining his upright position. Rhys watches him struggle for a few moments more before taking pity and activating the adjustable bed so that it whirs into place to support him. He sinks back against it with a sigh, but still seems to be struggling with something.

Regret, Rhys realises. He knows it's an emotion that Jack tries to avoid at all costs – much like sympathy and generosity. Honestly, there were times when he’d wondered if Jack was even capable – 

No. No that wasn’t fair. A reduced capacity for empathy, sure – okay, severely reduced. Maybe nonexistent on the empathy front. But Rhys knew … well, he knew  _ a bit _ about Angel. Not a lot, but enough. Enough to know that Jack could regret things.

He just hates doing so.

Jack’s hand closes around his wrist again, but this time it’s careful, like Rhys is a delicate piece of tech.

‘Face is a bit touchy,’ he says. ‘As in … don’t touch. At least … not if I’m  _ sleeping _ , pumpkin.’

‘I gathered that. How does the leg feel?’ Rhys can’t believe he’s giving the man an out, but there he is. Giving it to him on a silver platter, like the weak sucker he is. 

Jack jumps on it like a life raft. 

‘ _ Itches _ like a motherfucker. Y’know, I kind of wish I hadn’t killed all those bandits down there, so I could go back and do it again. Guess I’ll just settle for airlocking the freakin surgery team.’

Rhys blinks. ‘You what?’

‘Well, they saw this,’ he gestures to his face. ‘So they’ve got to go.’

Rhys feels an immediate sensation of utter peril, worse than when Helios had been sending moonshots his way.

‘Ahaa…’ he says. It’s … not a word. But it obviously means enough that Jack can understand it because he throws back his head in a proper belly laugh – before folding forward, hand clutching his ribs. 

‘Ahahaha … ow, ha, aw man, Rhys your  _ face _ . I’m not gonna kill  _ you _ , dumdum.’ He pinches Rhys’ cheek. ‘Was gonna have to let you see it eventually, I hate wearing the mask at night. Chafes like a bitch.’

The scar makes his grin a little lopsided. It’s unreasonably attractive – Rhys would go as far as  _ more _ attractive than the mask’s perfectly symmetrical version.

Rhys lets out a relieved laugh. ‘I was going to say, those doctors did a pretty good job …’

All of a sudden, Jack snaps back to serious.

‘Oh, I meant it about killing those guys. Security risk, cupcake. Besides, who knows what they did while I was out – bet they couldn’t help but take a few of my fancy cells. A little DNA. Don’t want that getting in the wrong hands.’

He – ugh, and Rhys  _ hates  _ that he’s thinking it, there must be something wrong with him – has a point. Jack obviously picks up on the quiet acceptance and takes the chance to steer away from the topic.

‘Sooo, how was it?’ he asks eagerly.

‘How was what?’

‘Cupcake, you’re killing me.  _ Pandora _ ! It was your first time, right?’

Rhys tells him exactly what he thinks of Pandora, in lurid detail that has Jack cackling. 

‘Tell me the bit where you shot the guy again, go on.’ Of course that’s the bit Jack likes the best. He stops Rhys before he gets to the point where he found Jack – ‘I know that bit,’ he says hurriedly. Rhys gets the sense that he doesn’t like hearing about himself in a vulnerable position.

‘You uh, hallucinated. Quite a lot,’ he says. Jack avoids his eyes. ‘Yeah, guess the dehydration and the blood loss got to me. Mostly it was you I saw. Got a bit confusing when the real one turned up.’ He leers – ‘Pretty hot, though, p’raps we should think about getting  _ you _ a body double, eh?’

‘There was someone called Lilli–'

‘Don’t wanna talk about that,’ Jack says abruptly.

Rhys successfully fights off a sarcastic and probably masochistic urge to praise Jack for using his words. It is progress, after all. A few months ago, Jack probably would have fired him out an airlock for daring to breach such a topic.

Speaking of firing …

‘So, I’m getting my job back, right?’ It’s a joke – of course Rhys is getting his job back. He’s good at it, and Jack likes the convenience of having Rhys nearby rather than using the ECHOsystem to summon him up from his old department everytime he gets horny. It  _ is _ a joke, right up until Jack doesn’t answer straight away. 

It feels like someone has pulled the space station out from under Rhys’ feet.

He … he  _ needs _ his job. He has spent a decade inching his way up the Hyperion ladder.

‘Rhys.’

That’s a third of his entire life.

‘Hey, dumbass –'

Who is Rhys Strongfork, if he’s not Hyperion?

He says that last bit out loud, or something like it. He must do, because Jack interrupts him.

‘You’re a moron, that’s who.’ Jack is holding his face, one hand on either side. ‘You … go somewhere for a second there, Rhysie?’

It feels like his heart is grating itself against his ribs.

‘Look, you still want that job? You’ve got it.’

‘Of course I want it.’ He tries to pull back, but Jack is holding him there, squashing his cheeks a bit.

‘It’s just … there’s another option.’

Rhys scowls. ‘If you’re about to suggest some kind of sugar daddy set up, I’ll punch you in the ribs.’

‘I’m not –' 

‘Is this because I disobeyed your orders?’

‘My what?’

‘You know what.’ Anger prickles down his spine. ‘I tried to use the override code you gave me when Blake wouldn’t let me requisition a couple of loaders, but Blake said he was declining on  _ your _ orders.’

Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Did he now? And this was before he sent loaders to hunt you down.’

‘Yes!’

‘And fired you. All while I was sitting pretty in a bandit cell.’

‘... Yes.’ Why does Rhys feel so very dumb right now?’

‘And tried to put you P-Level when you got back?’

Rhys said nothing. He was processing, okay? He just hadn’t had time to process it all yet.

Jack squished his face again, making his lips move.

‘Oh Jack!’ Jack said, in a squeaky voice that was, presumably, meant to be a Rhys impression. ‘You’re so hot and smart and good at reading people –'

‘Wasblgh uin’ – ugh, get off. Was Blake staging a coup? Why haven’t you locked him up?’

‘What?!’ That’s apparently not what Jack was hinting at at all. He finally lets go of Rhys’ face, sitting back, looking perplexed. ‘Blake is loyal as  _ shit _ Cupcake, he lives and breathes Hyperion. He knows this place would go to shite without me. Nah, Ol’ Jimmy Blake’s just jealous, cupcake.’

‘Of?’

‘You, dumbass.’

‘Me? Why? Oh god,’ Rhys gives Jack a horrified look as the thought strikes. ‘Me and  _ you?  _ Blake wants to – ew. Ew!’

‘What? No Blake doesn’t wanna  _ bone me _ cupcake, Jeez. Your mind is sick, sick place. Nah, he’s jealous ‘cus…’ Jack hesitates, running a hand through the grey streak in his hair. He looks older without the mask, lines on his face deeper and more pronounced. ‘Aw, I was gonna make this big announcement an all, but he’s jealous ‘cus you’re getting VP.’

Rhys can’t help it – he laughs.

‘ _ Me _ ? VP of Hyperion instead of  _ Blake _ ? Jack, that's the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’

Jack says nothing.

‘I… I'm flattered. But this is a joke, right?’ Rhys glances from side to side, a little unnerved by Jack apparently having nothing to say.

‘Jack I’m… I was a  _ middle manager _ in securities propaganda. Now I make coffee and organise your schedule! Or I did, when I wasn’t fired. But even if Vasquez hadn’t beaten me to that promotion that would be a hell of a skill level jump, right? Sure, VP was the dream but… y’know, when I’ve got the experience and the grey hairs, and only an idiot would make me Vice… uh.’

Jack doesn't kill Rhys for calling him an idiot (albeit in a roundabout way). Instead, he turns over in his hospital bed, arms folded and facing the wall.

‘Jack…’ 

Jack ignores him for the rest of the evening.

When Rhys wakes up the next morning, Jack is already sitting up in bed, dressed in a ratty Hyperion t-shirt and sweatpants, prodding at a touchscreen on his lap. An empty mug sits on the bedside table, a faint smell of coffee lingering in the room.

_ Workaholic _ , Rhys grumbles internally. He’s going to make the most of being on medical leave, and actually relax. Also, he’s scared to check his work messages for fear of being overcome by an avalanche of angry people trying to make appointments with Jack. Word has spread that he’s back on the station, and the rumour mill is spitting out half truths and conspiracies left and right.

Jack isn’t so engrossed in his work that he doesn’t spot Rhys stirring. A balled up piece of scrap paper bounces off Rhys’ forehead.

‘Hey, cupcake!’ 

So, not continuing the silent treatment. In fact, he sounds pretty cheerful.

‘Are you  _ working?’  _ He asks, even though he knows it's a yes.

‘Can’t let folks think I’m out of commission, can I?’ Jack says. ‘Maliwan is just waiting for a chance to sneak in and steal control of the market in the Edens after that slump last quarter… R&D needs someone breathing down their necks or they never get anything done…’

Rhys knows, for a fact, that R&D’s productivity rises by a whole 10 per cent when Jack is off the station, but now is probably not the time to bring that up. Jack is in a good mood, and Rhys lets him ramble happily about remote shield coding and profit margins and blackmailing shareholders. He even behaves when the nurse comes in to change the dressing on his leg – Rhys hurriedly averts his eyes after catching sight of raw, new-grown flesh and feeling his stomach turn over. 

Before he leaves, the nurse declares Jack’s fractured cheekbone stable enough that he can wear his mask again.

‘For  _ short _ amounts of time,’ he stresses.

‘Funny,’ Jack says, ‘I wasn’t aware I needed permission, sweetheart.’ But it lacks bite – or at least, bite is hidden behind the undisguisable relief in his voice. Rhys doesn’t watch him clip it back in place; it feels strangely private.

The return of the mask is well timed, because that afternoon, Blake comes to visit.

‘You wanted to speak to me, Jack?’ There he is, with his hair like devil horns, and Rhys can’t help but feel nervous. 

‘You did?’ Rhys asks. Because if Jack had  _ said  _ a member of the board, aka the  _ Vice President _ who already hated Rhys was coming around, Rhys would not still be in his pyjamas.

Thanks for the heads up, Jack.

He folds his arms to hide the cutesy robot ‘ _ Ssh _ ,  _ I’m recharging! _ ’ decal splashed across his chest.

‘Not really, I mean,’ Jack lounges back against the raised bit of the bed, ‘I thought you'd want to tell Rhysie yourself how  _ thankful _ you are that he generously decided  _ not _ to take the VP seat.’

Was this Jack’s way of letting Blake know he fucked up, trying to kill Rhys? Jack telling him to keep his hands off? The thought is heartwarming, in a slightly creepy way. Blake certainly won’t apologise to Rhys, but he suspects that of the two options, the VP would find thanking him more humiliating.

To Rhys’ surprise, Blake is quite enthusiastic.

‘Certainly! It’s uh, refreshing to have someone displaying such  _ sense _ , Strongfork.’ He turns to Rhys as he talks, and doesn’t see Jack’s smirk. 

_ What are you up to, Jack? _ Rhys wonders.

‘As a member of the board, not to mention a  _ shareholder _ , I have a great deal of respect for someone who puts the good of the company over personal gain.’

Okay, that was unexpectedly … nice of Blake. 

_ I mean _ , Rhys thinks,  _ I don’t think I’d be  _ bad _ for the company. Just … lacking a little experience.  _ Rhys remembers what Jack said earlier about Blake’s loyalty. It makes sense now.

‘Thank –' he starts to say, but Blake isn’t finished.

‘I think we’ve averted quite the disaster,’ he continues. ‘Just think of the bad press having a former  _ secretary  _ in such a vital role –'

Okay,  _ rude _ . And Rhys was a PA, thank you very much. Not that Jack’s secretary wasn’t great! Rhys loves Meg. Meg just … hates Rhys a bit. No biggie.

‘– not to mention the CEO’s uh … companion.’

‘Boyfriend,’ Rhys corrects him. ‘I think we can safely say that, now that I've moved in with him.’

Blake offers a diplomatic, thin-lipped smile. ‘All in all, job well done. Better to leave this sort of thing to people who know a thing or two about business, eh?’ He sticks out a hand for Rhys to shake. And oh, does Rhys shake it.

‘Ah! Tight… grip you’ve got there, Strongfork,’ Blake says nervously, as if he’s now realising he’s crossed a line somewhere.

‘Only the best, considering its Hyperion made,’ Rhys says. 

‘Of course…’ Blake tries to tug his hand back, but Rhys’ fingers aren’t budging.

‘Just so you know,’ Rhys tightens his grip, ‘I’ve been writing business plans since I was  _ six _ . And I've been writing  _ good one _ s since I was twenty.’

‘I’m sure …’ something crunches in Blake’s hand and his face loses the little colour it had in the first place. He shoots a panicked look at Jack, who just crosses his arms behind his head and smiles, enjoying the show.

‘I have a yearly ice cream budget.’ Rhys leans in closer. ‘I have underwear replacement forecast. Adjusted quarterly. For Jack-related variables.’

‘I didn’t need to know that,’ Blake grits out.

‘What, about the variables? Adjustments are important. And sometimes  _ necessary _ .’

Blake looks confused.

‘Like,’ Rhys explains, ‘the adjustment. That will be me being VP, instead of you.’ He loosens his grip, and winces at the colour of Blakes fingers.

‘You might want to get a doctor to look at that,’ he adds. ‘In the hospital suite. The regular, non-presidential one.’ Then, just in case Blake hasn’t got it, ‘Because you’re not –'

‘Ah, now you’re just overselling it, cupcake,’ Jack says loudly. ‘You almost had a nice punchy end there, with the adjustments line. Shoulda stuck with that.’

It's then that Rhys realises he’s just been duped into accepting Jack's offer. That Jack used his own personality, his dreams and pride against him.

Rhys should be mad. He is, a little. But …

But  _ Vice President _ Rhys can’t really bring himself to care.

  
  


‘Don’t think I don’t know what you just did,’ he says, when Blake has slunk away, cradling his hand.

‘And what’s that, cupcake?’ Jack plays innocent. It doesn't suit him. Rhys takes his seat by the bed.

‘You’ll regret this when I restructure your god-awful process review system, just you wait.’

Jack smiles, angling his body toward him.

‘Think you’re overestimating just how much power the VP really has.’ His fingers brush along Rhys’ shirt collar, and Rhys leans in subconsciously. ‘And here was me thinking that I’d be the first item on your to-do list. I’m hurt.’

‘Exactly,’ Rhys says. ‘You’re hurt. Your –'

Jack grabs the front of Rhys’s shirt, pulling him down on top of him.

‘Quit.  _ Fussing _ !’ He says, and shoves their mouths together.

‘Mmph,’ is all Rhys can say to that, and it’s lost in the kiss, Jack’s teeth against Rhys’ sore lip, Rhys’ hand snaking up to grab Jack’s hair.

‘So,  _ hero _ ,’ Jack says, breathless, lips wet and eyes maliciously bright. ‘Gonna rescue Ol’ Jack from blue balls now?’

‘Your leg — ‘

‘We can leave my freakin’ leg out of this, my dick is fine. More than fine.’ Jack sneaks a hand around and grabs Rhys’ ass, tugging him in so that he’s on the bed, straddling Jack’s hips to stop himself from falling on top of him.

‘I’m doing you a favour, cupcake,’ Jack says, right in his ear as his fingers unbutton Rhys’s pants. ‘You wanna get to the "hey we survived!" victory sex before the buzz wears off. Freakin’ awesome.’

Rhys isn’t sure there ever  _ was _ a buzz, but Jack can be mighty persuasive – testament to which: the warm hand cupping Rhys’ cock.

‘Fuck,’ he says.

‘Might not go that far,’ Jack says. ‘I was thinkin’ mutual handjobs, ‘cus of what the doctors said about physical exertion and all.’

‘Sounds good,’ Rhys wheezes. He can admit it, he’s missed Jack. There, he said it. They might be terrible for each other, but Rhys is too far gone to ever give this up. Gone enough to risk his life and his  _ job _ and his stupid fucking comfortable couch for Jack.

‘This is your reward, Kiddo,’ Jack croons. ‘You gonna take it or what?

Back in that dusty, bloodstained room, Jack had  _ needed  _ Rhys. The thought makes him lightheaded – or maybe that is the blood rushing south.

Rhys pushes him back against the bed, hands on his shoulders, following his mouth with his own.

‘I’unno,’ he says, between kisses. ‘Maybe I won’t; maybe I’ll let you  _ owe me _ for a while. You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?’

Jack physically shudders. His hands are everywhere, leaving Rhys’ pants and boxers pushed down uncomfortably mid thigh to grab the back of his neck, worming up under his shirt to paw at bare skin.

Rhys starts to think that maybe Jack missed him too.

Except then he grabs at Jack’s crotch and –

‘Um,’ Rhys says.

‘Yeah, yeah just… gimme a minute.’ Jack doesn't meet his eyes.

‘We don’t have to…’

‘I want to,’ Jack snaps. ‘Do I look like I don’t want to?’

‘Right now?  _ Yes _ .’

‘Asshole. Keep going.’

Rhys sighs, and kisses him again, trying to distract him as his hand ventures below the waistband of Jack’s sweatpants, trying not to get hand lotion all over the fabric.

He strokes him a few times, but nothing doing, not even a twitch of interest.

‘Try talking dirty,’ Jack says. 

Rhys cringes. ‘You know I'm terrible at that. It's embarrassing.’

‘Try.’

‘Um. D’you know what the  _ next _ item on my to do list is?’

Jack quirks an eyebrow.

‘I’m gonna take you, and my new paycheck somewhere.’

‘Go on.’

‘To the shopping district.’

‘This is doing absolutely nothing for me, cupcake.’

‘We’re going to buy a new couch.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with our couch!’

‘And then I’m going to fuck you on it.’

Jack huffs. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’ He stares up at Rhys expectantly. 

‘Uh…’ how is Rhys the one feeling embarrassed here? He’s not the one having trouble getting it up.  _ Keeping _ it up, yes, but only because this is the least sexy ‘saved-your-life’ reward sex  _ ever _ .

‘Oh come on,’ Jack gripes, ‘that’s all you’ve got?’

‘You’re not exactly contributing much to the situation. Tenacious as you are, Jack, I don’t think determination is going to override the side effects of those painkillers you’re on.’

Jack pouts.  _ Pouts _ , and puts on the most ridiculously pitiful puppy-dog-eyed expression Rhys has ever seen, and he knows exactly what Jack is going to say next.

‘Maybe try suckin’ it?’ There it is.

Rhys makes a decision.

‘Fine. On one condition…’

Jack instantly looks suspicious, but Rhys is confident he’s making the right call.

‘You take the mask off.’

A blush blooms up Jack’s neck, his ears turning pink. Rhys wants to follow it with his tongue.  _ In a minute. _ Wait for it...

Jack is still for a moment, but nods – hesitant, Rhys would almost say shy except that he can’t associate that word with Jack, not ever.

_ Compromise _ , Rhys thinks, as he settles between Jack’s legs, looking up when he hears the soft click of metal clasps being undone. He can do compromise.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the longsuffering bowyer. The tense slips are all mine, and I hope I caught them all.  
@erry_nah on twitter — come say hi! twitter.com/erry_nah


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